Writing for Websites Part 1

Remember back in the day when I wrote for Suite101.com? Ah, memories. Well, round about the time I stopped writing here I stopped writing there but for good reason. I couldn’t take it anymore! Not really actually it was because of their restrictive guidelines. Ten articles every three months or your contract got removed. At the time I couldn’t keep up with this so I had to walk away. Plus I was only getting like $10 every three months so no big deal right?
Well, turns out I’ve found another site to write for which I’ve just submitted an article for Associated Content. I will write more details later but bottom line is that they let you write with a voice rather than as a robot. Something about Suite 101 made me feel like I was writing a bunch of stuff for school which I do not want to have to go through again.
If my first article gets published on Associated Content which I hope it does I will do a comparison of the two sites and what it’s like to write for them. Until then this is just a little check-in to let you all know I’m thinking about you.

xoxoxo

New WordPress Features and Other Things I Like

I was just thinking that I like the new WordPress feature QuickPress. I use it all the time (unless I have to include linkage). Anyway how are you? I’m fine.

I decided to have a day in which I didn’t do anything basically today so I sat around and watched movies including Charlie and The Chocolate Factory (the new/good one not the old/horrible one) and Signs. I wrote a little in my second graphic novel script which I will talk more about later. Now I’m watching Communitychannel videos on YouTube. Not that I’m educating anyone about the best ones but here are some of my favorites:

Techie Weekend: Zhura.com

I found Zhura through the 48 Hour Film Project website on their list of free script writing programs to try. Having downloaded some in the past and not really liking them I was surprised to find Zhura to be totally web based and free forever.

If you’re a screenplay writer you’ll like Zhura’s traditional layout and easy to understand formatting. If you’re new to screen writing you’ll like the fact that this is not only a script writing program but also a social community of writers from all over the world. But then again, isn’t everything a social community from something from all over the world? So maybe that’s not such a unique feature. Users can collaborate on projects but only if they choose to do so because the website gives you a personal license option which allows you to store your work on your profile only so no one else can see it.

Zhura is not only for screenplays though it gives you layouts for graphic novels (which they for some reason call comic books), stageplays, sitcoms and a free-form editor similar to Word. The only problem with this last feature is that it has no word count feature which is exactly what you need if you plan to write something to enter into a contest.

I give Zhura hands down two thumbs up.

The First Post of the Rest of My Life

So I’m back. Back to this blog. After a brief…actually long…stint as a blog shopper trying out different blogging sites some for profit some not I have actually found that the best ones use the same layout/technology as WordPress.

So what about that writing? Well, glad you asked. Atlantion is hanging around in a state some might call unfinished but I might call “I’m !@#$$%%ing done with this!” in favor of writing a couple of graphic novels because I am far less embarrassed to say that I’m a science fiction writer than I am to say I’m a fantasy writer.

I am writing this graphic novel on a website called Zhura http://www.zhura.com which is totally awesome and a site that everyone should go to.

In future this weekend I will be reviewing a few things that I’ve discovered recently so hang with me.

More Interesting…

I keep trying to put my computer away but…hold on…I actually had more trouble writing hold on than it would have been to just go ahead and turn on my iTunes without telling you. I had to write hold on though because this is one of those times when I am thinking this blog would actually be more interesting if it were a vlog. Mostly because I have been watching meekakitty on YouTube and thinking about vlogging again which I think would be a good idea. Better than it was a few months ago because I love myself now.

I’m listening to new Emigrate I got a few days ago on my birthday as a surprise from the new MP3 Player Fairy who gave me ten free songs from Rhapsody which I used to clear out some of the songs I was going to buy from iTunes (in your proverbial face, iTunes!).

As of Saturday I am 24. Yay! Sort of…hold on again…had to change the song.

There are three types of people on Skype:

Generic perverts who read things into my picture that aren’t there, Perverts who try to breach the subject by saying things that are physically impossible like “Can I lick your —- and — for you on cam?” Well, probably not since you’re behind a computer therefore considerably limiting the possibility of that happening. So I suppose the answer to that is “No but you can lick the screen if you want.”

And then there are the lonely dorks who are on Skype at 3pm even though they are in America…but I’m not one of them…I was just on there yesterday for…other reasons…

Moving on…

Wow, there are a lot of dots in this post. Here are some more…after all you can’t spell socially awkward without social! …

I’ve officially made the decision to apply to grad school later this year and hopefully I won’t have to live here much longer!

I know that sounded intense but I have literally lived in the same place since I was born and I have never met anyone else in my life who has been in that same situation. So no one understands the situation. But I won’t have to be that way for long!

Ooooh turned on my iTunes visualizer! I may have to be one of those people who listens to music for no reason. Right now I just feel like I have to be writing or doing genealogy/graphics/school stuff to justify listening to music…or reading sometimes I read while I have music on but I find it hard to do sometimes.

Tomorrow I get back to school work for the LAST TIME before I graduate in DECEMBER! I ordered my books for the last time today so that felt good.

Thinking about becoming a tutor…like for a job…but I don’t know…we’ll see.

The other songs I got for my birthday were:

1. Viva La Vida–Coldplay

2. American Boy (feat. Kanye West because what other version is worth it?)–Estelle

3. Gold–Klee

4. Resolution–Emigrate

5. Let Me Break–Emigrate

6. Nine in the Afternoon–Panic! At the Disco

7. La La–Ashlee Simpson

8. In My Head–Ashlee Simpson

9. All Around Me–Flyleaf (I’m obsessed with this song)

10. Absolutely Nothing–Lily Allen

Ok so maybe I’m obsessed with all these songs and music and all of that as usual. I just wish I could get a LOT more German music…punk and rock preferably but America is so cut off sometimes! All we get is like in English!

Last.fm is my only refuge for primarily German rock now and that sucks because I can’t have it in the car. But I can have Feeling B in the car. Now I know that sentence would have been more interesting on a vlog because I would have been all eyebrow-raisey and sinister about it and then played a little Feeling B and you would have known why I was raising my eyebrows so sinisterly.

I do like Klee too I have three of their songs now and as far as I can tell all their stuff is in German (auf Deutsch! I have to get used to using some of this stuff sometimes!).

I think one reason I haven’t progressed as quickly as I would like in my German is that no one is as impressed with it when I use it as I am. and OMG I have seriously used up over 684 words of my English vocabulary in this post. Wow 726!

I probably could have used this time better but I’m trying to break the habit of acting waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaayyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy way older than I actually am which I have done my entire life and I’m sick of it!

Yes I do…or Something

Two weeks or so ago my car was broken into and my MP3 player was stolen. Technically this was my fault because I left it in there with the doors rolled down on the other hand my purse was also ransacked and three dollars were stolen from that which shouldn’t have happened because it was in the trunk and only someone who had been watching me get out could have known it was in there.

There are three reasons why I feel no remorse for my MP3 player being stolen two I realised immediately when it happened and one I only just realised today. 1) They can’t charge it when the battery runs out, 2) they have no way to add songs to it and the funniest reason 3) the language settings are set to German!

LOL! That makes life worth living.

In other news: Yes I am still writing that Atlantis story that I mentioned in my post of earlier this year about writing my first battle scene. The difference between then and now is that I’m almost done with it. The majority of this time has been spent trying to decide how many pages the story should be because in one respect it is a pretty broad subject to cover in fictional terms but then again I’m not really inclined to write three hundred or more pages about it even though I do love the characters I don’t want it to get lost in the sea of other Historical Fiction novels that go all the way up to 900 pages in most cases.

I may self publish it as an e-book just for pressure-less writing experiment purposes who knows. I just thought you all needed an update on what’s been going on because it has seemed like I have dropped off the face of the Earth in this and my other blog.

NAPP Tour Charlotte NC 08

I made it out alive! If you were following my Tweets yesterday you already know that I didn’t remember where I parked my car after twenty minutes of walking to the convention center. Yes, I said twenty minutes.

The conference was great it was taught by Dave Cross master of some of the coolest things I’ve ever seen done in Photoshop. I am also now a member of NAPP because of this conference. It was slightly painful though because it was one of those things that made me want to turn on Photoshop! and I couldn’t. But I have several dozen books, publications, magazines etc. (OK  maybe not that many) that they gave me for becoming a member/going to the conference.

Because I’m from Greensboro going to downtown Charlotte, NC really put some things into perspective and I learned something about myself that I didn’t know/was a relief. I should live in a big city. The reason I don’t fit in here is that I act like someone from a big city. I’ve always wondered that about myself but it’s true, it has been confirmed and now I want to go to New York where I will stay more than one day and NOT DRIVE!

Driving in downtown Charlotte has proven to me that I can not and should not drive in a city of any size at all except for going to and getting out and even then taxi’s are our friends.

So I’m off to revitalize my website and build my portfolio etc. etc.

XOXO

Excitedness!

I went on an interview today and guess what? I am now a teacher at a local community college! Of course that’s not as impressive as it could be but it is one step closer to my ultimate goal of teaching at a university (trust me, the experience counts). I’m going to be teaching digital painting and making pop-up cards (two different classes).

This rocks and I’m pumped and I can finally breathe! I’ve been waiting for this interview for almost a week. Tomorrow I will have a post about the Photoshop tour seminar I am going to in Charlotte, NC possibly here, possibly at Great New Artists possibly both and definitely on Twitter.

O…The Eeyore Magazine

Nothing good to write about in Great New Artists, reading about Mao, writing about Mao for school etc. Have good and exciting interview on Monday and good and exciting conference on Tuesday will be back with more later in week.

Taking a day off for a change.

Books by Pop People

Today I went to buy one book. I came home with four. I justify this in two ways: One actually is the book I intended to get also I found An Abundance of Katherines and The Gun Seller are two books I’ve been looking for for a long time.

The one I went to buy in the first place is Mao: The Unknown Story which I had to have for school/to write a paper because I screwed myself by picking the cultural revolution as a topic for a 1200 word paper. I have to read 610 pages by next week and find three more sources for my works cited.

On the other hand I have never been so happy to find a book on communism in my life.

Guess that means I have some reading to do.